Consultant says Lake Mills staff and parent survey scores are up year-over-year; pay and discipline remain lower-scoring areas

Dr. Rob Demuse, vice president of research at School Perceptions, presented spring 2025 staff and parent survey results to the Lake Mills Area School District board, saying the district’s staff and parent indexes were above the neutral 3.0 benchmark and that several measures improved from the previous year.

“Not only is that good, but it’s a little bit abnormal in a good way for districts who have done these surveys multiple times,” Demuse said, describing a 197-response staff sample and a 272-response parent sample. He told board members the district’s staff response rate was higher than average and that year-over-year gains were meaningful for a district of this size.

Demuse reviewed the staff indexes — academics, engagement, support, student experience and staff experience — and said every index was above 3.0. He said the district improved in academics (nearly 3%), engagement (about 1%) and student acceptance (over 2%). “You have to look at are you above or below three? Because that’s the side of the fence that you really want to be on,” he said.

On specific items, the highest staff scores included healthy working relationships (4.39), “our staff does a good job of educating our students” (4.32) and ‘‘I feel safe at work’’ (4.30). The one item below three was whether pay practices are fair; Demuse noted that, while pay fairness still trailed other items, it showed substantial year-over-year improvement.

Board members pressed Demuse on measurement and interpretation. Asked about margins of error and what constitutes a meaningful change, he said that, given the high staff response rate, a 2–4% change year-to-year is substantial for this district. “If you were going to move up 5% that’s a bar that’s pretty high to clear,” he said.

Parents’ responses were also positive on aggregate. Facilities cleanliness (4.28), feeling welcome at the child’s school (4.26) and staff treating students with dignity (4.20) were among parent top items. Parents indicated they prefer email and automated phone/text notifications as primary communication channels; Demuse advised against relying heavily on Twitter for parent outreach.

On the question of comment access, Demuse said School Perceptions did not release raw comment text to district staff this cycle and described why many districts share thematic analyses rather than raw comments: once raw comments are public they become subject to records requests and that perception can reduce future response rates. He also described an internal, human-led approach to producing thematic summaries that uses AI tools but includes paired human reviewers to limit bias.

What’s next: Demuse said the district will receive the full report for distribution to staff and families and that longitudinal comparisons for parents will begin next year. Board members asked for disaggregated analyses by building or grade for future work to help target communications and improvements.

Board attribution: quotes and attributions come from Dr. Rob Demuse’s presentation and follow-up answers at the meeting.